Following 99 and Preceding 101
by Black-throatedBlue
Summary: Collection of hundred-word OQ and Mills-Hood drabbles. Includes why there's a moon, behaviour to be hidden from Roland, Robin 'meeting' the parents, Robin 'meeting' the ex, Missing Year trust, Regina in the rain, post-townline time apart, a proposal, and a reunion.
1. Drizzle

_**A/N: **Written as a daily challenge because I psyched myself out of writing. At the moment I'm planning to write one for each letter of the alphabet so, if it works okay I'll probably batch post a couple every few days. Each individual chapter is unrelated and they do jump around a lot in terms of time/setting and tone (generally fluffier than my usual wont) between Missing Year and future!fic etc. If you like any/have any feedback please do review, it's lovely to hear from people. :)_

_The rumour for this first story/chapter comes from the Discworld Witch series. I don't know if it exists outside it._

* * *

**Drizzle** -

Robin heard a rumour once, that witches walk bone-dry in downpours, but if it were ever true he'd not know it to see the Queen in drizzle. She's ignored him the full mile since clouds proved his warning wise, hair white and slick with moisture and dark shadows spreading through dress fabric, and he'd offer her his cloak if he thought her mature enough to accept it. Her skin is wet, though, and water wells, staggers, slims around goosebumps on the rise of her breasts, and -

"Your Majesty -"

She scorns him, of course, and a raindrop skates off her nose.


	2. Moonrise

**Moonrise** -

"Why's there a moon now?" Roland asks, open face upturned.

Regina's straight from Snow's counsel when she passes them on the terrace, third monarch of three and mother without a son, and the moon is a slight white gibbous on a blue afternoon, barely noticeable and redundant - what it does it matter?

(But it _is_ there, Regina thinks, though the sun burns so thoughtlessly sure and the moon shines better in darkness, it tries in daylight and that must mean something.)

"Maybe it wants to keep the sun company," the Thief says, eyes skittering from hers. "It needn't always shine alone."


	3. Acorn

**Acorn** -

Roland finds it an adjustment, living in a house.

He picks up sticks and leaves in the garden and then forgets them, playing indoors, and Regina squashes down frustration and tries to be a gentler form of strict and - eventually - the playthings of an outdoor childhood collect in bowls left for the purpose, only crumbled detritus persisting on stairs and doorways and in the carpet.

She's puzzled, then, come fall, to find an acorn on her dresser.

"Potential," Robin says, "A chance of life - hope you can hold in your hand."

Regina smiles, kisses him, and - "Don't let Roland see."


	4. Rose

**Rose** -

"Did he know?"

"That I'd rip out his heart?" Regina spreads fingers beside the rose - soft petals flattened beneath their bundled weight against the marble - then curls them back. "Yes."

She doesn't have to look at Robin to know his careful study but her heart checks unwillingly all the same, steadier for finding compassion and not revolt.

"What did he say?"

"He believed - like you - that I could be happy." She catches the flicker of his smile at the prompting. "But he didn't expect I'd actually do it."

Robin hums, solemn again, then – "Did _you_?"

She didn't _know_, but -

"Yes."


	5. Startle

_**A/N:** Blatant allusion (more so before I had to chop a hundred words) to '10 Things I Hate About You', which wow, somebody please write an OQ AU of? Reviews very welcome.  
_

* * *

**Startle** -

They've been fighting monkeys longer than's strictly complimentary for once-feared Evil Queens when an arrow flies too close to her and Regina tenses, startled.

She'd seen it – _she should've caught it._

The Thief who'd drawn his bow on her once in threat and thought better had drawn on her again – too _close_, in chaos – and let the arrow fly.

And she'd let the arrow hit.

(A monkey behind her, shrieking.)

Despite threats, despite weakness, truth lies uncomfortable – she trusts him, and hates him most of all that he might be worthy of it, and mightn't really hate him, at all.


	6. Frost

**Frost** -

Robin wakes to Regina's warmth and the unwelcome news (after a lifetime of chilled tents, worried for winter) that there's frost, and it's iced the car windows.

There's a knack to ice scrapers, and he doesn't have it (yet).

But Henry does, and is persuaded to a race.

And Robin thinks, shattering ice patterns on otherworldly fine glass, Henry grinning through clouded breath as they fight to the windscreen finish line (Roland cheering indiscriminately in excitement, Regina locking up), that for all the chaos and heartbreak of Storybrooke this land has somehow made frost beautiful – and he is inexpressibly grateful.


	7. Number

**Number** -

It's the license plate of a dark blue Ford, the chapters of town ordinances, brass symbols on house doors – even Henry, dragged from operation to homework, looks up as she reaches for dishes with, "What's eight threes?"

She lives too much in the storybook, Regina knows, to be haunted so by a number, but she's alone as the clock ticks on to midnight, that last hour that never quite forms, ink under her fingers where a man should be and even math must know the wrongness. Twenty-three she touches, ripped and mended, should (could) there not have followed a twenty-four?


	8. Xeno

_**A/N: **Got way behind this week (so busy!) but will (hopefully) maybe be able to catch up. Reviews welcome. :)**  
**_

* * *

**Xeno** -

He's a stranger in a strange land, but he's had three, four weeks of Storybrooke and knows cars and phones and people, and for a time that might be enough.

But then Robin hiccups – a search on his name finds this land's legends, and they tell such tales of evil stepmothers and jealous queens that his stomach churns and his teeth could crack, and he could throw the computer to the floor, because she's warped beyond recognition (her notoriety fails her), and it's the too-strange thing in this strange land without her, that here not a trace of her exists.


	9. Haze

**Haze** -

His fingers slip on her skin, the world nothing but her gasps, her moans, the high softness of her voice when she says, "_Robin_," and kisses him over-hungry, slow and savouring lost with their clothes. He's tense with missing her no touch can translate, too much warmth and wet and curves that he can barely think he's overflowing with her, a townline promise to make every finger-span indelible flying from his grasp to have her everywhere so close.

"Slow," he murmurs, half-smiling against her lips, "I'm not going anywhere."

"_Oh_," she says, like crying, and doesn't slow down a bit.


	10. Cobweb

**Cobweb** -

The Thief winces, listless, and she insults him.

But he doesn't answer, for once, eyes grimly on the road, and she doesn't care.

She doesn't notice his absence at Snow's next meeting, either, doesn't find her focus drifting with no-one there to ignore.

And in the morning when she visits, when she peels back cobwebs and poultice and lets purple fire make him wince anew, not a pain-soaked word between them for all his tired, furrowed brow – when she pulls stranded web free afterwards, caught and clinging, and thinks of '_thank you_,' and heaviness in his eyes – she doesn't care.


	11. Thaw

**Thaw** -

When the rains come melting snow mists thick, the others lost amongst ghostly, damp-black trees.

("Where _are_ they?" she says, and he matches her look.)

It's easier, sometimes, like this.

("Well, I'll have no trouble finding _you_," he says, her fireballs a dirty glow in the white, and she glowers.)

And they wait, her hand loosely gripped to his shoulder while he's occupied with his bow, her other curled in readiness, listening together for wing-beats in muffled air.

(Then Snow materialises, the Queen's hand drops too slow, and Robin finds, when the weather warms, himself tumbled deep in cold war.)


	12. Echo

**Echo** -

They're arguing when Regina says it - that she only wants what's best, that he makes her weak.

It blows over, buried by bedtimes and homework and two plus two that become, inexplicably, four, but as Robin's own anger dims he finds himself bothered by the pattern in hers.

He asks, "Why do you worry so for weakness?"

And Regina startles, wary. "I -"

It takes nearly a month to complete the sentence.

And Robin thinks - learning Cora Mill's teaching in vague, hesitating summaries - of guilt, and of a scared confession by a fire, and of a lesson that sank too deep.


	13. Zephyr

_A/N: Half-way through! Reviews are lov_e. :)

* * *

**Zephyr **-

The windows open early for spring, but even soft, mild breezes fluttering parchment and strands of hair in Regina's eyes can't quite dampen the triumph (the relief) of the unprepared winter almost behind them.

Voices carry from below – a young boy's throat-trapped giggles and the easy murmur of a man she tries to avoid – and she's soon distracted by death pains of a particularly theatrical murder.

She could close the shutters. (But if the wind softens more than just her hair, briefly, if a smile curves in a moment of their company – no-one need ever know.)

Paperweights are useful things.


	14. Buckle

_A/N: 'I' was going to be a Missing Year (extremely loose) prequel to this, but I'm struggling with it so who knows, and you might as well read this first._

* * *

**Buckle** -

She turns out to have an awl, which Robin wouldn't've expected - nor the complete lack of magic as Regina double-sews doubled-over leather with waxed thread and heavy needles, straps the new buckle loosely and slips the mended quiver belt around him, absorbed.

He looks at her quizzically.

"My first love," Regina says, knuckles to his chest, running her thumb along fresh stitching, "_Daniel._ …He was a stable-hand." She mock-widens her eyes - "We can only hope you never stole horses from _him_."

Robin hums at the jibe and pulls her close. (He never knew a name, before).

She holds on tight.


	15. Kindle

**Kindle** -

It feels like punishment and maybe it is, but the Thief pretends polite distance and when he sits in a loose shirt, strong forearms precise on the table in front of him and every new millimetre of skin thrilling in the harsh summer light, her heartbeat stutters and she tenses her jaw because he's only a thief, and it's none of his _right_.

His eyes flick to hers and back, twice and frowning to find her steadfast in her gaze, a lopsided smile growing in query.

She traces the line of his neck and his eyes catch heat.

(She smiles.)


	16. Yoke

**Yoke** -

Robin doesn't ask.

It should worry her – it does, they've such histories, Leopold, Daniel,_ Marian_ rising – but Robin looks at her with the same love in his eyes, always, and they breathe second chances, she would be_ his_, so –

"Marry me."

He stares at her, blind-sided, and then kisses her, crowding her against a door-post and opening her mouth fierce with his, reassuring hunger in the wilful press of lips but no explicit answer, still, a familiar thumb stroking her jaw.

She pulls back, lingers, bracketed, "Robin?"

He frowns like she's the strangest creature in all the lands. "Of_ course_."


	17. Wake

**Wake** -

He's a lump, pulling on bedding, _too-hot_, she's heavy just to look at him.

But when she blinks sleep and finds him – eyes smaller when shut, wrinkles stark and stubble deep – she's lulled by breathing too-slow to feel her own to realise herself… unsurprised, her chest black-coated warm to think him safe, in her bed.

(_Safe_, even from her.)

It's a form of happy ending, Regina thinks, last minutes clicking till the alarm, that's within her grasp and, perhaps, beyond her right, that he's here when she wakes.

(That, after her lifetime, she wakes able to believe he will be.)


	18. Question

**Question** -

("Roland," Regina says. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing?" Roland squeaks, tilting back to smile at her with all bright-watted charm of guilt.

There're paint flecks on his lap, a stick in his hand, gouges in the paintwork of her gate, and she sighs, because Henry never did _this_, Henry – but they're letters, she realises, runic and painstaking, 'R' fractured in a bubble of paint and a Kindergartener learning to write his name in claim.

_I miss my room!_

Henry always knew his home was his.)

"Henry," Regina asks, carefully, "What would you say to Robin and Roland moving in… officially?"


	19. Opaque

**Opaque -**

She doesn't even notice, Robin thinks, and maybe it's paranoia after a lifetime of sight-lines and reflected movement but it's disturbingly obvious to him.

Mirrors.

(Her castle, office, home, _vault_ -)

Everywhere.

That she loses herself in, when troubled.

(_Every_ time she leaves the house?)

…And when not.

He approaches gently, a careful shadow where Regina stares at herself in conversation he's not privy to, and she greets his image with warmth she still won't grant herself and he thinks -

_'What do you see in me?'_

\- and spreads fingers on curves that turn her, to see herself through his eyes, instead.


	20. Usury

**Usury** -

He owes her, and then she owes him, maybe, but when the Queen calls their debt clear with golden arrows Robin can only think it a lie.

She smiles, bold and insincere to wish him well, and he's thrown him back through avoidance and spite to her first smile at Roland and eyes lit warm in the sunshine of first meeting and he knows, resigned flutter in his chest and a sigh, sunk, to the bottom of his toes, that the price for that debt is too high, and he cannot think to stop paying it – she takes his heart.


End file.
